Screams on Screen celebrates the monstrous emotions and transgressive, rebellious forces that fuel the horror genre.

Over two heart stopping nights in February (16th-17th), The Capitol erupts to become the spookiest place in Melbourne for “Screams on Screen”. This curated program at the interface of art/horror features live music, art, feature films, rarely seen experimental shorts, artist and director talks to celebrate the transgressive, rebellious forces that fuel the horror genre.

Attend both evenings for $15 at checkout!

The program includes a 10-year anniversary screening of one of the most influential Australian horror films of the 21st century, Jennifer Kent’s “The Babadook” (2014), a selection of art/horror auteur David Lynch’s rarely screened earliest experimental shorts (1967-68) as well as new shorts from some of Australia’s finest emerging and established artists, a digital restoration of Ann Turner's Australian folk-horror cult classic "Celia" (1989), and the first Iranian Vampire Western, Ana Lily Amirpour's "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" (2014).

The program also includes an exhibition of the monstrous sculptural works of visual artist Isabel Peppard and a live theremin performance by Roman Tucker.

An immersive and subversive celebration of the monstrous emotions that propel the horror genre, “Screams on Screen” captures horror’s potential to empower social ‘otherness’, from marginalized identities to taboo revolts against constrictive social structures.

Presented by RMIT Culture and SIGN at RMIT in partnership with ACCA and supported by City of Melbourne Annual Arts Grants in association with ACCA's exhibition "From the other side”, which centres the fear of the monstrous-feminine to consider the pleasure and liberation of horror from feminist, queer and non-binary subjectivities, “Screams on Screen” will project our darkest fantasies and social nightmares onto the big screen.

Full program below!

THE DARK DESIRE
Friday 16th February, doors open from 5:30pm

Isabel Peppard sculptural and photographic art on display in the foyer throughout the night

6:15pm: Roman Tucker, Live Theremin Performance in the Salon

Roman Tucker is the songwriter, music performer and theremin player from the acclaimed band Rocket Science. Roman's experience as a performer runs for over 40 years, since the tender age of ten, when he performed in the child prodigy group Royal Flush. He now lives in Melbourne and London, writing and performing in Rocket Science and creating music for theatre.

7:00pm: Experimental art-horror Shorts program

Untitled (Gasp!) (Drew Pettifer, 2024)
Untitled (Gasp!) intersperses moments from cinematic history where male-identifying characters gasp in fear. The syncopated rhythm of these spliced moments collates micro-challenges to expectations of masculinity and allude to queer histories of the horror genre.

Butterflies (Isabel Peppard, 2012)
A young artist struggles to make a living selling her drawings at a train station. When a sinister businessman offers her a paying job the prospect seems inviting, but the reality threatens to kill her imagination… Butterflies is a Gothic Fantasy stop-motion animation that speaks to the tension between art and capitalism and the struggle to preserve one’s creative soul.

Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (David Lynch, 1966)
Lynch’s first exploration into film, Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) was developed during his time at art school and presents a visceral and tongue-in-cheek metaphor about the process of expression and art marking.

The Alphabet (David Lynch, 1968)
The Alphabet is an experimental short film featuring a sick woman’s nightmare involving living representations of the alphabet. Combining animation and live-action the film presents an absurdist nightmare where learning and fear are intertwined.

Leave (Liang Luscombe and Cara Benedetto, 2023)
Leave uses puppetry to explore representations of Caucasian women and drunkenness in film and television. The stumbling woman, made famous in films and TV shows such as Fatal Attraction, Fleabag, Killing Eve, and Single Drunk Female, appears as a part-human-part-puppet character trying to piece together the night before. ‘Leave’ explores the erotics of the relationship between puppeteer and puppet, showing the way the puppeteer supports and manipulates the puppet to ask questions about agency and intoxication within the body horror genre.

8:00pm: Panel Discussion, Provoking the Dark Desire: Women in Horror

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (Moderator) is an Australian film critic, author and academic who has written eight books on cult, horror and exploitation cinema with an emphasis on gender politics.

Isabel Peppard is a Director, animator and visual artist. Her multi-award winning work has screened at top-tier festivals locally and internationally as well as at institutions such as GOMA(QLD), ACMI and The National Film and Sound Archive.

Liang Luscombe is an artist working across painting, sculpture, and moving image that engage in a process of generative questioning of how images and film affect audiences.

Janice Loreck is a Lecturer in Screen and Cultural Studies at The University of Melbourne and founding co-organiser of the Melbourne Women in Film Festival. Her books include Provocation in Women's Filmmaking: Authorship and Art Cinema (2023) and Violent Women in Contemporary Cinema (2016)

8:50pm: Feature - A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014)

A tale of love, loneliness, and family ties, "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" is set in the fictitious locale of Bad City. Dubbed the first Iranian Vampire Western, Amirpour’s take of the blood-sucking archetype is anything but prescriptive.

Language: Persian | 104mins | USA

THE DARK DOMESTIC
Saturday 17th February, doors open from 5:30pm

Isabel Peppard sculptural and photographic art on display in the foyer throughout the night

5:50pm: Experimental art-horror Shorts program

Heck (Kyle Edward Ball, 2020)

A little kid wakes up in the middle of night to the sound of his mom’s television blaring….

Kyle Edward Ball’s precursor to Skinamarink, the experimental horror film that was 2023’s surprise global critical and box office hit. This sublimely creepy short has never been exhibited on the big screen outside of Canada.

The Umbra (Hayley Millar Baker, 2023)

Illuminating the darkest and quietest part of the night when the veil to the physical and spiritual realms are at its thinnest, The Umbra unites the living with the ethereal through an occurrence of astral travel between an adolescent woman and a young spirit brought to physicality. The Umbra is a slow-cinema filmic work that centres female power and strength in reference to elements of the horror genre that is often focused on women’s psychosis.

6:30pm: In Conversation with Celia director Ann Turner

Jessica Balanzategui (moderator) is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cinema in RMIT’s School of Media and Communication. She is the Founding Editor of Amsterdam University Press’s book series, Horror and Gothic Media Cultures and Founding Lead of RMIT’s Streaming Industries and Genre Network.

Ann Turner is an Award-winning screenwriter and director, whose films include Celia, 1989, starring Rebecca Smart, which Time Out listed as one of the fifty greatest directorial debuts of all time.

7:00pm: Feature – Celia (Ann Turner, 1989)

9:00pm: From the other side: Artists on horror (panel with Maria Kozic and Julia Robinson)

Jessica Clark (co-moderator): Independent curator, writer, and researcher with a background in art history and art education. Clark currently holds the position of Yalingwa Curator at the ACCA.

Elyse Goldfinch (co-moderator): Curator, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. She has curated, co-curated and produced over twenty exhibitions across non-profit and independent gallery spaces, collaborating with living artists to develop projects throughout Australia and the Asia-Pacific

Maria Kozic works across painting, sculpture, photography, and film. Her practice has often drawn on the depictions and tropes of women, monsters and creatures in horror and exploitation films.

Julia Robinson visual artist working in the fields of sculpture and installation. She employs historical costuming and sewing techniques to create artworks that sit at the intersection of folklore, ritual, and folk horror.

9:35pm: Feature – The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)

This special screening of The Babadook celebrates the 10th anniversary of one of the most influential and internationally acclaimed Australian horror films of the 21st century. Jennifer Kent’s darkly disturbing feature debut starring Essie Davis set a new template for the haunted house subgenre, while also launching its supernatural bogeyman into the memeosphere: Mr Babadook has become one of the horror genre’s most iconic monstrous beings.

10th anniversary screening to be celebrated with a special surprise from Fun Time Film Club’s Zach Ruane (Aunty Donna)

Language: English | 93mins | AU

Screams on Screen is co-programmed by Jessica Balanzategui (School of Media and Communication, SIGN network lead), Elyse Goldfinch, Jessica Clark (ACCA) and proudly presented by RMIT Culture and SIGN at RMIT in partnership with ACCA and supported by City of Melbourne Annual Arts Grants. “The Umbra” was commissioned by RISING for Shadow Spirit, curated by Kimberley Moulton.

Image credit: Celia, Ann Turner, 1989 (still). Courtesy of Umbrella Entertainment.